Love Match (16 page)

The last thing Maya wanted to worry about was her future. She couldn't even figure out what to do in the present.

Cleo's voice took the place of Maya's alarm clock. “Here we go again.”

“What now?” Maya had a sense of déjà vu as she woke Saturday morning. She'd been so exhausted by the emotional upheaval of the day before—combined with a sugar crash from the cupcake—that she fell asleep way earlier than normal.

Cleo had a bright, big, and incredibly fake smile plastered on her face. “Guess who's back on the Wall?”

“Oh, Cleo! I'm so sorry.”

“Wrong again! It's you!”

“Ugh. Now I really am sorry.” Maya pulled her pillow out
from under her head and held it over her face. She did not want to begin her day like this.

Cleo pulled against the pillow, but Maya held tight. “You can't hide under that pillow. You're far too tall.”

Maya released the pillow so abruptly that it slipped out of Cleo's hand and hit the ceiling before falling back to the floor. Cleo slid her laptop onto the bed. The screen was filled by an extreme close-up of Maya as she was about to go in for a kiss with Jake.

Maya bolted upright. “The photos leaked from the shoot?”

The picture had to be from the half second before she ran out of the room. The headline above it read: “Brotherly Love.”

The title summarized the article succinctly. The story was about how Maya played Travis and Jake off each other. Not only did the article include those shots of Maya coming out of 360, but it also had the picture of her with Jake at Sour weeks ago. The story quoted an anonymous friend saying that Maya couldn't make her mind up between the brothers.

“Anonymous friend?” Maya asked.

“Gee, I wonder?” Cleo said

There was no real question. Nicole's manicured fingerprints were all over it.

“This is awful,” Maya said.

Cleo took the laptop back. “I'm surprised your phone hasn't been blowing up all morning. This story was posted an hour ago.”

Maya reached for her phone on the nightstand. “I turned it off before bed last night. I didn't want to talk to anyone.”

She'd missed five calls: one from Travis and four from Jordan. The call from Travis came in the night before. That was good. It was before the photo went up. The ones from Jordan started ten minutes after the story posted and continued, like clockwork, every fifteen minutes. The last call had come in two minutes earlier.

“This is not good.” Maya didn't bother listening to the messages. She hit return on Jordan's call. Travis was flying back this morning. She could wait to speak with him in person.

“It's going to be okay,” Jordan said as she answered the phone. Maya was getting used to her lack of greetings. “Esteban is freaking out, but Esteban always freaks out.”

Maya pulled the laptop back from Cleo. She couldn't imagine what the designer was upset about. Maya mostly covered Jake in the shot and all that could be seen of her dress was the left shoulder. The rest of the picture was “full of smoldering eyes and moistened lips”—to quote the caption under the picture.

Finally Maya had gotten that “smolder.”

“What does this mean for the campaign?” Maya asked. She tried to keep it professional when all she truly wanted to know was what people were going to think of her.

“The fashion blogs are already lighting up about the dress,” Jordan said.

Maya checked the article again. That was the only photo. “Did other pictures leak?”

“No. Just that one. But it's enough. So far everything has
been examined, from the material to the color. This story crosses from sports to fashion and everyone has an opinion.”

“Are they going to scrap the campaign?” Maya wasn't sure what that meant for her payment if the photos never ran. There was something about that in the contract, she was sure, but she never completely understood the legal language it was written in. Another reason she had to make this agent decision sooner rather than later.

“They've invested too much already,” Jordan assured her. “They'll probably just move it up and get the rest of the pictures out as soon as they can. Until then, they're working on damage control. I'll keep you posted.”

Jordan was gone before Maya could thank her. She was torn between updating Cleo on the conversation and checking Travis's message. She didn't have a chance to do either when the phone rang again. The number on the screen was from the school switchboard, which meant it came from someone on campus. Normally, Maya didn't answer a call when she didn't know who was on the other end, but she had a sneaking suspicion this was one call she couldn't let roll over to voice mail.

“Maya, it's Nails Reed,” Travis's dad said as she answered the phone.

“Hi, Mr. Reed.”

“I'm assuming you've seen the article by now.” Like Jordan, Nails didn't bother with pleasantries. “I'd like you to come to my office so we can discuss the situation.”

“Okay,” she said. “When would—”

“Now,” he replied as he hung up.

Maya shook her head. “Nobody says good-bye anymore, do they?”

Maya was back in the principal's office. At least this time she knew for certain that she'd done nothing wrong. She didn't leak that picture to the Wall. She wasn't the “anonymous friend” who gave those quotes. She wasn't even dating Jake
or
Travis. And yet, she still felt everything was all her fault.

The door slammed open behind her, causing Maya to jump.

“I'm so sorry, Maya,” Jake said as he came in. “I had nothing to do with that picture leaking.”

The apology caught Maya off guard. “I never thought you did.”

Jake sat in the chair beside her. “I wanted to make sure you knew I wasn't into playing games like some people. I'm just sorry this whole thing happened. I never should have taken this job.”

Maya worried that the “some people” was a reference to Travis. Jake probably thought his brother was working with Nicole again, even though that made no sense at all. Travis had nothing to gain from this story.

“It's okay, Jake,” Maya assured him. “No one could have anticipated this. And I needed the money. I'm glad you took the job.”

He took her hands in his. “Well, I'm sorry anyway.”

“You should be,” Travis said from behind them.

“Travis?” Maya released Jake's hand.

“I go away for one day and you're moving in on Maya again,” Travis said. “Unbelievable.”

Jake stood to face his brother. “Moving in on her? I keep hearing that you two are just friends. How am I moving in on anything?”

“So you are going after her?”

“I told her I would.”

It surprised Maya that he remembered that. He certainly hadn't been acting like it, no matter what he said while he fought with his brother. They continued yelling at each other, throwing accusations about Maya and things that had nothing to do with her. It wasn't odd to see Jake behave that way, but Travis was a shock. He was usually the calm, cool, and collected one in the family.

Nails seemed just as surprised as he watched his sons go at it from behind his desk, until finally he said, very softly, “Enough.”

Travis and Jake stopped immediately.

Nails stood. “I'm glad you two got that out. Now it's over. Understood?” His voice never rose above a whisper.

“Yes, sir,” both sons said in unison.

“I called you three here for damage control,” Nails continued. “That is what we're going to do. First, this teenage melodrama is going to stop immediately. It was a photo shoot. I don't care what it looked like. Maya and Jake were performing for the camera. That's all it was. Don't turn it into a real story.”

Maya squirmed in her seat. Nothing she'd felt had been a performance.

“No one will make any comments to the Wall or any other media outlet,” Nails said. “The Academy Expo is coming up. If you have to ignore the reporters, that's what you're going to do. I don't want any of this coming back on our family or the school.”

Maya knew she wasn't one of Nails's priorities, but it stung to hear him basically say that he wasn't worried about her at all.

“And I think Maya should stay away from the both of you for a while,” Nails added. “At least until the story dies down.”

“Dad!” Jake said.

“That's not fair,” Travis added.

“I would think you had enough to worry about right now, Travis. If we learned anything from that disastrous spot on
The Hype
, it's that you need a little more time to concentrate on football and avoid pointless distractions.”

Maya had obviously missed something. She felt particularly horrible about going to bed without catching up with Travis's appearance on the sports show.

Nails shuffled through the papers on his desk. He removed a pair of pages from the pile. “Travis … Maya … I've filled both your schedules with meetings and projects to prepare for the Expo next weekend. The two of you will be very busy. I'm sure Jake can find some distractions to occupy his time.”

They all knew the word “distractions” was code for “girls.” Jake's distractions were usually frowned upon, but Nails clearly wasn't above using that facet of his son's personality when it suited his needs.

Nails handed one of the pages to Maya, finally looking
directly at her. His expression softened, as did the tone of his voice. “I'm not blaming you for this, Maya. You're as much a victim here as anyone. More so, because you're the bigger name at the moment. I just feel it would be best to avoid giving this story legs. If there's really nothing to it, the media will move on quickly. Then you can all go on with your lives. Sound good?”

The three teens mumbled things that sounded like agreement and Nails dismissed them with a smile.

Jake tore out of the room without looking back. Maya felt like Travis was hanging around waiting for her as she put her schedule in her bag and got up from the chair. She didn't want Nails to see them walking out together since it was exactly the opposite of what he'd just told them to do, but there was no choice. Travis was holding the door waiting for her.

“I'm sorry about Dad,” Travis said once the door was safely closed behind them.

“What is it with you guys apologizing for things you have no control over?” Maya said, attempting to add some levity to the mood.

“Guess Jake and I are more alike than any of us thought,” Travis said. They fell into silence.

As they left the Administration building, Maya expected Travis to say good-bye and head in a different direction, but he stayed with her. The silence between them grew awkward.

“So, you saw
The Hype
?” Travis asked.

“I'm so sorry,” she said. “Now it's my turn to apologize. Yesterday was so crazy with the shoot and … everything. I never had the chance to watch it.”

“Then you were probably wondering what Dad was
talking about in there,” Travis said as they made their way across campus.

She was afraid to ask. “It didn't go well?”

“It was horrible,” Travis said. “The whole segment was about whether or not I was a real player or ‘All Hype.'” He threw in air quotes to mock the show's signature segment in which a panel of judges discuss an up-and-coming star to decide if he or she is the real deal or not.

“They didn't tell you that you were part of that segment?”

Travis's body deflated. “No. When they first brought it up when I walked on set I thought I was one of the judges.”

Maya was horrified for him. That was even more embarrassing than showing up on the Wall in some badly researched gossip story. This was about Travis as an athlete. That was far more important than who Maya was kissing.

“They just kept talking about my dad,” Travis said. “Saying how no one would even know who I was if I didn't share his name.”

“Obviously, they've never seen you play.”

“That's the thing,” he said. “They have! The judges all visited the school in the past year. One person on the panel did defend me. But even she brought up the times I've been on the Wall, saying how that was just ‘Hyping me up.'” Again with the air quotes. Maya never realized how annoying the show's signature lines were until they were aimed at someone she cared about.

Maya had to ask the one question that she really, really didn't want to. “So … what did they decide? Are you ‘All Hype' or not?”

“That's the worst part,” he said, bringing his hands up again for another set of air quotes. “‘The jury's still out.'”

Maya wrapped her arms around Travis. She didn't care that they were in public, where any number of camera phones could snap shots of them. Her friend needed comfort.

“The jury's still out” was the worst judgment anyone could get on the show. Saying someone was “Worth the Hype” was a badge of honor. “All Hype” could at least give a person something to be angry about, to show everyone how wrong they were. But “The jury's still out” says they didn't even care enough about Travis to decide.

“I should get to the gym,” Travis said as he pulled out of the hug. “I need to lift some weights.”

“Do that later,” Maya suggested. “Let's get breakfast.”

“No. Dad's right. I should focus more on my game.”

Even though Travis didn't add in that he should spend less time with Maya, that unspoken part was all that she heard.

“Call me later,” she said. “Let me know how you're doing.”

“Sure.” He threw on a smile. “And hey, that picture with you and Jake. Even though I hated to see it, you did look great. The ad campaign is going to be a success. And that's all because of you.”

“Thanks,” Maya said. The campaign was the last thing she cared about.